he had learned in every situation (4:10-12). So Paul is telling us the
way to be whole people in our relationships with God, with one
another, and within ourselves. But before we look specifically at
what Paul is teaching and how to obey it, we need to think about:
I.
WHAT PAUL IS NOT TEACHING: THE POWER OF
POSITIVE THINKING.
I need to focus on this for a moment because the Christian
world has been infiltrated with the false teaching of “positive
thinking,” popularized by Norman Vincent Peale and, with only
slight variations, by Peale’s protege, Robert Schuller. If you are at
all familiar with the teachings of these men, you know that they are
not Christian in any orthodox sense of the term, even though they
both have been welcomed into evangelical circles. Through their
influence, the idea has crept into the American church that it is
wrong ever to be negative or critical. This has resulted in the loss
of discernment.
A young woman once stopped attending the church I pastored in California because she said I was too negative. When I
pressed her for specifics, she showed me my sermon outline from
the previous week. Sure enough, I had to admit, my points were
stated negatively rather than positively. But I pointed out to her
that I had taken the points verbatim from the biblical text. But that
didn’t matter to her! And, of course, it didn’t occur to her that she
was being critical of my preaching, or that Paul and Jesus were often both critical and negative. She believed that we must always be
positive.
The positive thinking heresy has further spread through the
so-called “Positive Confession” heresy, also called the “Health and
Wealth” or “Name it and Claim it” teaching, that whatever you
confess positively by faith, God must do it. This heresy attributes
power to faith itself, and says that even if you are sick, you must
not give a negative confession by admitting it, but must claim your
healing by affirming, “I am well!”
Also a number of purportedly Christian sales companies or
successful salesmen have utilized a form of this error through a
sales motivational teaching called “positive mental attitude.” You’re
never supposed to entertain negative thoughts. You’re supposed to
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